


Tsunami Dream

by GoblinCatKC



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Nuclear Weapons, Post-Apocalypse, Surreal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2019-10-31 10:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17847386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoblinCatKC/pseuds/GoblinCatKC
Summary: One calm summer night in New York, the birds flee the city just before the skyscrapers melt and explode and collapse into dust. Nuclear detonation. But with destruction comes transformation as the surrounding ocean flows in and covers the streets. This is all so dreamlike...but neither of them is dreaming.





	1. When the Bubble Pops

**Author's Note:**

> This is intentionally increasingly surreal. Written after Gaiman's 'Tale of Two Cities.'

Stargazing didn't really work in New York. The city lights drowned out the stars—but the heat rising from the streets made the city flicker in and out, wavering like a mirage, and the streetlamps and glowing gold of the windows made the city seem like a layer of stars floating on a black ocean.

Leonardo sat with his little brother, watching Michelangelo sketch the dark outlines of Manhattan, the bridge and the river. These were the best times in life—quiet, surrounded by the city but unbothered by it, listening to his brother work.

"I think if I add in the river," Michelangelo murmured, "make it reflect all the light from the windows...what do you think?"

Michelangelo turned the art journal toward Leonardo, waiting for his opinion. The position left him balanced precariously on the building's edge, his legs dangling from the side. Leonardo sat behind him, shell against the ledge, leaning sideways so he could rest his head on his arms.

Lifting one eyeridge, Leonardo glanced at the drawing for a moment, then sighed and relaxed again.

"It'll look like the city sunk," he murmured.

"Will not," Michelangelo said, sticking his tongue out. "You'll see."

Leonardo didn't argue. If Michelangelo didn't think it would look silly, then it wouldn't. His little brother was a good artist. And he was too tired to argue. They really should have started back home, but the night wind carried the cool salt breeze from the ocean, clearing away the smog, and, for once, the city felt clean.

His communicator beeped.

With a faint sigh, he reached down and unclipped it from his belt, thumbing the button that put it on speaker.

"What's up?" Michelangelo asked, not looking away from his drawing. "You almost here?"

"Change of plans," Donatello said distantly. "Raph came back from Casey's all banged up. Ice cream'll have to wait."

"How bad is he?" Leonardo said. "If he can't make it—"

"He could if he wanted to," Donatello said. "Relax, he'll be fine. Knocked his head up and I think he actually cracked a couple knuckles. Splinter just said he's not allowed to go climbing around the city."

"Awww..." Michelangelo heaved a long sigh, then started putting away his pencils. "That's no fun. We'll have to bring you guys back some, then."

Leonardo assured his brother that they were on their way home and clipped his communicator back to his belt, then glanced at his brother.

"Anything we bring would melt by the time we get home."

Michelangelo grinned. "So I'll make sure to eat it before then."

Finding his brother's laugh infectious, Leonardo was coming to his feet when he felt it.

Intense dread welled up in him. Facing Shredder alone, nearly losing his brothers—he'd felt this before, but never without knowing why. He felt the heavy lead sinking through his soul, weighing him down, and when he glanced up at Michelangelo, he saw that his little brother felt it, too.

Michelangelo had frozen as if going numb, grabbing Leonardo's hand as if he was going to fall. They both looked around, but there was nothing obvious. Just silver clouds over an empty black city and a golden city shimmering in the background.

A sudden burst of birds—pigeons and sparrows and seagulls and crows—all roared up from the alleys and streets. The great flock covered the sky as thousands of them wheeled up and away, soaring over the coast, following the line of the ocean away from the city.

Leonardo tightened his hand on Michelangelo's and pulled him toward the edge, toward the fire escape, knowing he had to get them to safety, to underground, away from being so high—

The ground rumbled, as if a terrible monster shifted underneath the dirt.

Something flashed across the sky, lighting up the city as bright as day for a brief moment.

Michelangelo started to turn, to see what had happened behind them, only to be yanked forward and over the side. As they ran down the steel steps, Michelangelo caught the briefest glimpse of a white bubble growing over the city, its glare reflected in every window. The bubble grew orange and red with golden streaks, and just as they reached the ground, the bubble burst.

Every window exploded, and the air sparkled with shards of glass.

The wind roared, and he saw cars and people sent flying through the air as if picked up and hurled by giants.

The heat came just as suddenly, and the ground began to steam as the temperature rose and rose and rose. Just as he became aware of the pain, he felt his brother's arms around him. There was a terrible rush of darkness, and then the air began to grow cooler again, to grow quiet again. Michelangelo stayed awake just long enough to squeeze his brother's hand and feel nothing in response.

Two buildings had collapsed together, the steel beams and wooden planks of their old construction bearing down on each other, propping up either side from complete destruction. Over the settling dust and mortar, a lone piece of paper fluttered onto the bricks, smoldering and catching fire as it lay still.

Over Manhattan, the mushroom cloud rose higher above the burned shell of the city.


	2. When the City Shifts

Bricks shifted, grinding together as tons of weight tilted to one side. Tiny breaks appeared in the rubble and sunlight broke through in thin rays of light. Dust particles floated through the light, blowing in wild circles as he breathed.

Michelangelo watched the dust for several minutes. He lay where he'd woken up, askew and on top of his brother. His left side felt sore and throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and his whole body felt like lead. 

Not until the ground rumbled again and something cool touched his side did he begin to stir. Mumbling his brother's name, he slowly sat up, feeling for anything broken. His whole left side felt like his skin had been sandblasted.

"Leo...wake up."

Michelangelo turned, nudging his brother's side. For a moment, panic gripped him. Leonardo didn't move, didn't seem to breathe. The coolness pooling beneath them was water seeping in from the sides. Michelangelo gathered it in one hand and splashed it over his brother's face, or where he thought his brother lay in the dark. 

The low groan and sharp intake of breath made Michelangelo slump in relief.

"Don't scare me like that," he murmured. 

"...what...?" Leonardo started to sit up, hissing as he moved. "What happened?"

"Don't know." Michelangelo pointed at the small rays of light. "C'mon. Bet we can get through there."

"Careful how you move," Leonardo said. "Everything feels real weak. Unstable."

"Yeah. Hey, you okay?"

Leonardo was silent a moment too long.

"Dude—"

"It's just my hand," Leonardo muttered. "Left one. I can't close it."

"You bleeding out?"

"I don't think so? It doesn't hurt."

That didn't reassure either of them, but it would have to wait until they could see. Pushing rubble out of the way brought in more water, and they wordlessly shifted to pulling the heavier brick and stone that was higher up. As soon as they made the opening wide enough, Michelangelo scrambled out, then turned and helped Leonardo free.

They emerged amid huge piles of brick and twisted steel that had once been the fire escape. Surrounded on both sides, they moved far enough from the rubble to be sure that it wouldn't fall on them, and then they turned their attention to their own injuries.

Michelangelo's left side had suffered burns from his hand to his shoulder, down his side and thigh. His face, pressed against Leonardo's plastron during the explosion, hadn't suffered so much, but his mask and armbands flaked away, leaving lighter marks on his skin.

"Not that bad," Michelangelo murmured, pressing the skin of his arm. "First degree."

"Still, need to find you some first aid supplies," Leonardo said. "But at least..."

His voice faded as he looked down.

"Oh. That's why I couldn't close it."

Michelangelo followed his brother's look and winced.

Leonardo's hand was impaled at several points by the wiring used to graft satellite antennas. In the fall, something had unraveled and simply found his hand in the way. Leonardo instinctively moved to grasp the ends, but Michelangelo touched his hand, shaking his head.

"Don't pull it out yet," he said. "Wait till we can stop the bleeding when we do."

Faced with the cold sensation of seeing such an injury, Leonardo nodded once and cradled it against himself. 

The city was silent. Coming out from their shelter of rubble and stone, they climbed down several feet of broken asphalt and found themselves up to their knees in water. Michelangelo bent and gathered it in his hand.

Clear. The water held nothing dark, no pollutants, nothing. Just clear, clean water, probably from a broken water line. He washed it over his burns, then splashed it completely over himself. After a moment, he did the same for Leonardo, who couldn't cup the water as he did and had been lying in the dust beneath him.

"We should call home," Michelangelo said. But when he reached down to his belt, he found the communicator broken and missing the bottom half. He grimaced and saw that his brother's was also shattered.

"They know we were together," Leonardo said. "They'll know we'll stay together."

"But...what about them?" Michelangelo bit his lip. "Donny and Raph and—"

"Same deal. We know they were together. They're strong. We just have to stay alive and we'll find each other."

Leonardo put his hand on Michelangelo's shoulder, hoping he sounded as confident as his words. Because the horizon that he could see, and the horizon that opened up in front of them as they came out into what had once been a street, nearly sent him to his knees.


	3. When the River Rises

There were still buildings around them, but all of their windows were blown out. Their floors and walls had caved in like the side of a row of dollhouses. Signs and lamps all lay flat, their bent poles barely visible over the water covering the asphalt.

On the other side of the river, from Midtown to Lower Manhattan, the skyline was blackened, charred, still smoking in wisps that climbed up to the clouds in the dead air. Chunks of the old horizon were gone. What skyscrapers remained stood broken in half and the sunlight through them revealed the exposed grid of their walls and floors. 

"What..."

Michelangelo walked toward the destruction, but he stopped when Leonardo grabbed his arm, drawing him up short. The road ended at their feet, and sparkling sunlight on the water concealed where the concrete and asphalt had sheared away. If he studied the flat surface before him, however, he could see the pipes and partially exposed basements and cellars below them, all of them submerged underwater.

"This is crazy," Michelangelo whispered. "What happened?"

"...I'd guess a nuclear explosion." Leonardo raised his good hand, sweeping across the horizon. "Ten kilotons. Weak, comparatively. Probably a terrorist attack. Groundburst, since we didn't see any planes."

Michelangelo gave him a look. "Seriously?"

"What?" 

Michelangelo let out a long, shuddering breath. "God, you're as bad as Donnie sometimes."

Leonardo half-shrugged. "I mean, it'd be the easiest way to do it. Probably shipped it in a connex container—"

"No, I mean...whatever." Michelangelo looked at the devastation. "You can really tell just from that? There's barely anything left."

"There's concrete and steel," Leonardo said. "And we're still here. That means it wasn't that big, and that the fireball and thermal radiation weren't that strong."

Michelangelo felt even more sick. "Weren't that strong?"

Leonardo was quiet for a moment. "No. It could have been a lot worse. Although..."

He turned, looking at the city behind them. 

"There's no way of knowing if this was the only attack. Or...why it's so empty now. There should have been survivors. Lots of survivors. The city should still be here."

"Radiation?" Michelangelo asked. "Maybe the sun goes down and we're all glowing."

Leonardo shook his head once. "Doesn't work that way. And why is it flooded? It shouldn't be like this."

They both looked over the street again. Beneath them, fading into the darkness, they watched a small school of silver fish float through the exposed subway. And the water was now up to their ankles, rising.

"We need to get out of this," Michelangelo said. "What if there's sharks?"

Leonardo couldn't think of an answer to that. He and his brother turned and began to walk down the remnants of the way home, passing empty apartments and slogging through water that, with no current or pull, had now come up to their knees. When they were three blocks away and still wading, they found a convenience store with its door gone and its wares floating in the aisles. 

"We can—" Leonardo started.

"I can," Michelangelo said. "You sit down and rest."

"You're burned."

"You're stabbed," Michelangelo said with a faint smile. "I win."

Sitting on the counter, Leonardo watched his little brother through the security mirrors, never taking his eyes off of him as Michelangelo collected supplies. His brother even broke through the anti-theft mesh of the pharmacy and brought back a half dozen pill bottles.

"I found some backpacks," Michelangelo said, putting everything on the counter and hopping up beside him. "We can carry a lot of food for awhile."

"What we need is a radio and a boat," Leonardo grumbled, but it wasn't the lack that made him irritable and they both knew it. He held out his impaled hand and turned his head.

Since they'd woken up, the shock had dulled the pain, but as Michelangelo pulled out the wires in one go, the pain rushed back in. Leonardo grit his teeth, refusing to cry out, especially not in front of his brother. He didn't feel the antiseptic spray or the bandage being wrapped tight around his hand and knotted around his wrist. Last was a plastic bag pulled over his hand and duct taped so that water wouldn't find its way in.

"My turn," Michelangelo said, giving Leonardo his side. 

With only one hand, Leonardo managed to clean out his brother's burns, then gently apply salve and follow up with bandages along his arm and the top of his leg. For his face, Leonardo used sparing amounts of bandage for the worst patches and wrapped the rest at an angle, covering his left eye.

"Can't really waterproof any of that," Leonardo said apologetically.

"I'll just try to stay up out of the river," Michelangelo shrugged. "It's not like a hand you'll be reaching with."

Picking through the debris floating around them, Michelangelo gathered up food and bottled water while Leonardo looked for matches, thermal blankets and survival gear. When he spotted one of the boxes, he gasped and pulled it over, clumsily bringing out a radio with a handle. After several turns of the crank, the radio crackled to life.

"What the heck?" Michelangelo held it safely in his hands so it wouldn't fall, and he read the name on the top. "Hand crack radio...no batteries. Huh."

Leonardo turned the dial, awkwardly plucking up the antenna for better reception as they listened to dead air. Station after station went by, all of which should have been playing. And then they finally heard a voice.

"June 9th...evacuate to Allentown. Second and third staging areas of Baltimore and Philadelphia are lost. Avoid New York. Come back. June 9th...evacuate to Allentown. Second and third staging areas of Baltimore and Philadelphia are lost. June 9th..."

"June 9th?" Michelangelo echoed. "We were out a whole day."

"Staging areas..." Leonardo frowned.

A vague idea began to form in his head. For whole cities to become 'lost'...

"No," he said softly. "I think...I think we're missing a lot more than a day."


	4. When the Ocean Shimmers

They were lucky—they passed a sporting goods store within the hour. They found it dark inside—none of the lights worked, and they had to search via the flashlights they found by the door. Pushing past floating basketballs and soccer balls, they eventually found the display of inflatable rafts and an airpump.

"This'll beat walking through all that," Michelangelo said, laboriously pushing air into the raft. "'Course, don't know where we'll float to, but at least we won't be wet."

Unfolding the raft, holding it at the water's surface and clear of any sharp debris, Leonardo didn't answer. He stared into the water, watching the ripples expand out.

Michelangelo paused, watching him, then quietly finished.

"You go in," Leonardo said, tossing the backpack of supplies to the front. "Keep everything from falling out."

"You're not gonna get in?" Michelangelo asked, gingerly entering the raft and kicking the droplets from his feet.

"You need to conserve your strength," Leonardo said. "You're not feeling it yet, but those burns are going to flare up pretty bad. There's pain killers in the backpack. Best to take some now. And change out the wet bandages if you can."

Michelangelo didn't argue, letting his brother take what little control they had left. As they moved through the shop, he swiped in armloads of food and grabbed a big red umbrella on the way out.

When they were floating in the street, he understood why Leonardo hadn't wanted to get in. The water level wasn't high enough to support both of their weight, but it did bring Michelangelo's wounds out of the salt water and give him time to rest. Now that he wasn't walking, Michelangelo felt how the burns had been slowing him down, dragging with every step.

They made slow progress—to where, neither of them knew. Sometimes Leonardo hopped on the edge of the raft as they floated over huge craters in the street, sometimes paddling them down another lane.

"Where we headed?" Michelangelo asked.

"I thought maybe April's place," Leonardo said. "See if it's still standing. Maybe they left a message for us."

"That's...not a bad idea," Michelangelo admitted. "At least we don't have to cross the river."

"Looks like the bridges are still kind of standing," Leonardo said. "But maybe we'll find a better boat."

"What's wrong with the raft?" Michelangelo asked. "I don't think a boat'll float like this thing does."

"A raft's fine for now," Leonardo said. "But the water's been getting higher. I think we'll need something bigger pretty soon."

Leonardo pushed a little harder, sitting quickly beside his brother as the raft soared over a vast crevasse of broken pavement and fish swimming by. As they watched, gold koi as large as themselves swam in lazy circles, brushing their fins against each other and disappearing back under the shadows.

"Okay..." Michelangelo murmured, his voice low so nothing would hear him. "I know that isn't normal. Koi? And that big?"

"Mutagen? Radiation?" Leonardo shrugged. "...Donatello would know."

"We'll find him," Michelangelo said. "I promise. I'm sure him and Raph are somewhere safe. They're probably holed up trying to save the world with alien technology and a tooth brush."

Leonardo gave him a half-smile, but it faded by the time they reached the other side of the street.

The walk took another hour, but they saw no one in the silent city. The water gleamed silver as they came up to April's building.

It was nothing but a single wall standing over collapsed brick. They didn't bother to explore. But they did see, painting in bright orange and blue letters, graffiti across the front that said to "Come back."

They stared at the letters of dripping paint, and Leonardo touched the streaks of color with a fingertip. It came back wet.

"The paint's fresh," he said. "That...doesn't make any sense."

"What's it even mean?" Michelangelo asked. "'Come back' where? Home's underwater. This place is gone. Maybe they thought we left the city?"

As they stood still, the sky rumbled. They looked up, and where there had once been endless blue, the sky now rolled with gray thunderclouds.

"You should get in here," Michelangelo said. "If there's gonna be lightning."

"Not yet," Leonardo said. "There's a museum a few blocks down on the waterfront. I want to see what it has."

"That's...a transit museum." Michelangelo craned his neck back, glancing at his brother. "Trains, right?"

"There's other stuff there," Leonardo said. "Transportation stuff. Hopefully something that floats."

It was good a choice as any, Michelangelo supposed. He unfurled the umbrella and held it over them both just as the rain began to fall. The steady drone of water pouring down made them fall silent, and Michelangelo had to bail with one hand so the raft didn't sink. It let him feel less like dead weight as his brother pushed the raft along.

They were almost to the river when the huge tail appeared up out of the ocean. Gold, covered in barnacles, it rose dozens of feet into the air and hovered over them for a terrible moment.

Michelangelo gasped and dropped the umbrella. Leonardo had stopped pushing, but there was no time to try to escape its reach. Instead he jumped into the raft and grabbed his little brother just as the tail came down, slapping the water with so much force that they were briefly stunned, holding onto each other for fear of losing the other. The raft rolled with the wave, capsizing, turning over, leaving them in the wake of glimmering scales.

When they looked up again, they were sitting on the street, the water to their chests. Neither of them moved, clutching at the other and not feeling their own wounds. The raft was gone, their supplies were gone. The huge koi swam away through water barely a meter high. And the tail must have knocked over the weaker standing walls because the closest buildings were piles of brick.

"I'm starting to think this is how everyone died," Michelangelo whispered. "Not in a bomb. The ocean got 'em."

"...maybe." Leonardo chuckled ruefully. "Look up."

Michelangelo did. And he started to laugh.

They were somehow outside the public library that had been miles away. It had to be the library. The stone lions sat on either side of the doorway, regal in the light reflected off the water. The doors had been ripped from their hinges in the blast, and a slim wooden boat was slowly tipping out of the library, coming down the waterfalls made by its staircase.


End file.
